The question, therefore, reverts to this, as has been repeatedly said already, What is the principle constitutive of the intelligent life and activity of a created spirit? When this principle is evolved into act, the created spirits fulfils its type, and realises its ideal perfection in its own order. Now, according to the preliminary doctrine we have laid down, this is an active power to apprehend the image of God in the creation, or to contemplate a created image of God which is a finite similitude of the infinite, uncreated image of God, that is to say, the Word. Beatific contemplation is a contemplation of this infinite, uncreated image without any intervening medium. Yet is an intellectual operation of which God is both the object and the medium. It is not therefore the operation which {155} perfects created intelligence in its own proper order, but one which elevates it above that order, giving it a participation in the divine intelligence itself. Created intelligence is perfected in its own proper order by its own natural operation; and although the intervention of God is necessary in order to conduct it to that perfection, so that it is strictly true that a supernatural force is necessary to the initiation, explication, and consummation of the natural order of intelligence, yet this does not elevate it to a supernatural mode and state of activity in the strict and theological sense of the word. Created intelligence is perfected by the contemplation of the Creator through the creating, and has no tendency or aspiration to rise any higher. True, it has an essential capacity to become the subject of a divine operation elevating it to the immediate intuition of God, or it never could be so elevated. This is the really strong argument in favor of the hypothesis that God, if he creates at all, must create an intelligent order determined to the beatific union. It is equally strong in favor of the hypothesis, that he must complete his creative act in the incarnation, because created nature is essentially capable of the hypostatic union. For what purpose is this capacity? Does it not indicate a demand for the order of regeneration, and the completion of this order in the incarnation? It is not our purpose to answer this question definitely, but to leave it open, as it has no practical bearing upon the result we are desirous of obtaining. Presupposing, however, that God determines to adopt the system of absolute optimism in creating, and to bring the universe to an end metaphysically final, as he actually has determined to do, this question, as we have previously stated, must be answered in the affirmative. There is no metaphysical finality short of the hypostatic union of the created with the uncreated nature, which alone is the adequate, objective externisation of the eternal idea in the mind of God. The metaphysical, generic perfection of the universe demands the incarnation, with its appropriate concomitants. But this demand is